When Thailand’s former finance minister, Korn Chatikavanij, took office in late 2008 he knew little about the Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives (BAAC), a state enterprise within the finance ministry’s portfolio. “When I learned upon becoming finance minister that one of my responsibilities was to chair the BAAC and attend board meetings, I said, ‘Do I have to?’,” he recalls.
Mr Korn could have appointed a subordinate to the task, but in retrospect he is glad that he did not. “I would say, in fact, it was probably one of the most satisfying roles I had to play as finance minister,” says Mr Korn. “[The bank] is one of the most effective tools available to the government. I used to call it ‘our secret weapon’, because everybody underestimated it.”